The present disclosure relates generally to a design structure, and more specifically to a design structure for dissipating thermal energy generated by semiconductor devices utilizing backside thermoelectric devices.
The cooling of integrated circuits becomes increasingly difficult with scaling, as there are more devices per unit area per die. There are a variety of cooling solutions, for example, servers may be cooled by using large metal heat sinks, fins, and water cooling. However, for portable devices, a small form-factor cooling device is desirable. One solution involves thermoelectric cooling (hereinafter “TEC”), which uses the Peltier effect to create a heat flux between the junction of two different types of thermoelectric materials. TEC devices are solid-state active heat pumps which transfer heat from one side of the device to the other.
Thermoelectric devices formed from semiconductor thermoelectric materials do not need any liquid or gas as coolant and have the advantages of continuous work capabilities, no pollution, no moving parts, no noise, long life, small volume and light weight. However, traditional thermoelectric devices have a large volume and require a separate power supply circuit. As such, they can only be attached to an outside of 3D stacked integrated circuits, which may have issues with effectively cooling the interior high temperature areas.